Abstract

Background: Closed suction drainage after joint arthroplasty is common practice in many institutions. The purpose of this study is to determine the correlation between routine drain tip culture and the diagnosis of superficial or deep postoperative wound infection after primary knee and hip replacement.
Methods: Over a 12 month period, drain tips were retrieved and cultured in all patients who underwent unilateral primary total knee or hip replacement with the use of closed suction drainage. 393 cultures were performed in 387 patients (145 hip replacements, 242 knee replacements). Patients were followed for an average of 8.9 months post surgery to assess for postoperative wound infection.
Results: 3 patients had a positive drain tip culture, none of which were diagnosed with superficial or deep infection. 4 (1%) Patients were diagnosed with deep infection, 16 (4.1%) with superficial infection. No patient with either superficial or deep infection had a positive drain tip culture after their index procedure. The sensitivity of routine drain tip culture for the diagnosis of postoperative infection in primary joint replacement was 0% and specificity was 99.2%.
Conclusions: This data does not support the practice of routine drain tip culture after primary hip or knee replacement for the diagnosis of postoperative infection.

These databases contain citations from different subsets of available publications and different time periods and thus the citation count from each is usually different. Some works are not in either database and no count is displayed. Scopus includes citations from articles published in 1996 onwards, and Web of Science® generally from 1980 onwards.

Citations counts from the Google Scholar™ indexing service can be viewed at the linked Google Scholar™ search.

Full-text downloads displays the total number of times this work’s files (e.g., a PDF) have been downloaded from QUT ePrints as well as the number of downloads in the previous 365 days. The count includes downloads for all files if a work has more than one.